It's Finally Here

It's cake tasting day! It's cake tasting day!
Yes, I'm actually doing a silly dance to go with my very silly song.

Second only to photography, the cake is my single most important wedding expense. You see, I make cakes myself. I made my niece's baby shower cake.


I also made her wedding cake.


I even made the groom's cake. In my defense, I'd been making cakes for three days straight and I was exhausted by the time I got to this one. Besides, I maintain that we were going for the rustic look to go with the whole hunter's fleur-de-lis motif.


Both Jakob's family and mine are a little crazy about cake. Scheduling cake tastings has definitely been one of the highlights of my wedding planning journey. So without further ado, our first (two) cake tastings:

The first bakery we went to is Kim & Company in Estes Park. Bonus, she also does floral design so we were able to get a quote for both cake & flowers while we were there. Like a lot of bakers, she gave us a cupcake tasting. And yes, I took photos, even though Jakob made fun of me.


(clockwise from top left) white cake with white icing, Italian cream cake with almond butter cream icing, carrot cake with cream cheese icing, and chocolate with chocolate icing (I think that one's obvious). We also got to taste the strawberry & raspberry fillings.

We weren't allowed to choose the flavors we tasted - those were the standard ones.
The carrot cake was great, but just not "us". We had already agreed we didn't want chocolate cake or chocolate icing - it just doesn't make me think wedding cake. Besides, I'm really not that fond of chocolate cake (sorry, all you chocaholics out there). I went into the tasting thinking I'd like the traditional white cake with white buttercream the best, and it was fantastic! I loved the cake, loved the icing. I was thinking this is the one. Then we tried the italian cream. It's white cake with almond and coconut, and it was topped with the almond buttercream icing I so wanted to try. I LOVE this cake! I didn't expect Jakob to be crazy about it because he really doesn't like the texture of coconut. Guess what - he loved it too. Kim even said she could throw the coconut in a food processor so the texture wouldn't be noticeable.
We looked through her photo albums of work, and I loved the diversity of designs she's able to do. Perhaps even more important to me is that she has a steady hand when icing designs onto cakes. This was important because I want some elegant little scrollwork. Fondant is easier to deal with but I HATE the taste of fondant!

Next up, cake tasting #2.